“Oh, oh,” Bonnie said, laughing.
“Is that possible?” Ryan asked. “That was back in 1980.”
Richard laughed as well. “When Duster bought the jukebox, he had it delivered here. Stout is on his way to ask about that delivery and see if anyone knows anything about why a jukebox would be delivered to an historical institute forty-three years ago or if there are any old records about it.”
“Suggestions?” Bonnie asked Richard.
Richard only shrugged as he went around behind the counter and looked in the fridge for something to eat or drink. Clearly Richard was used to this place and Ryan was surprised he hadn’t crossed paths with Richard at one point or another. There just weren’t that many time travelers using the Institute in this time period.
“Suggestions about what?” Duster asked as he came toward them from the direction of the crystal rooms.
Duster still wore his long coat, cowboy hat, plaid shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots. He clearly had just come from a trip into the past.
He walked over and kissed Bonnie hard. More than likely, for him, he had been gone for years.
Ryan and Talia didn’t feel they wanted to start taking separate trips into the past yet. Or ever for that matter.
“How was Delemar?” Bonnie asked, smiling at her husband.
“You back in the Silver City area?” Dawn asked, looking surprised.
Ryan knew just enough of general West history to know that Delemar was a small mining town with a great hotel down the valley from the old mining town of Silver City in the southwestern corner of Idaho.
“Just spending a few years playing some poker,” Duster said.
“And playing Marshal as well, I’ll bet,” Bonnie said, smiling at her husband.
“Sure, why not?” Duster said, shrugging and turning to Richard. “So what’s this suggestion thing?”
“We’re going to have company in about a half hour,” Richard said taking some bread and sandwich meat and working to build a sandwich. He glanced over his shoulder and smiled at Duster.
Ryan was glad to see that it took Duster a moment to recognize Richard as well before moving around and shaking his hand. It seemed that Richard didn’t visit the Institute that often, even though he lived in the same town.
“So I was asking for suggestions as to how we want to approach Mr. Radley Stout,” Richard said, “the former owner of the Garden Lounge. He somehow traced the delivery of the jukebox to here and is coming by with his wife, Jenny, in about thirty minutes.”
“So since it stopped working,” Ryan said, “he’s been trying to find the original owners?”
“He has,” Richard said, nodding before taking a large bite of his sandwich.
“Three years,” Duster said, laughing. “That’s some pretty good dedication to a cause.”
“So any suggestion on how to handle this?” Richard asked. “More than likely it will be best to just turn him away.”
“And let him keep trying to find the thing?” Bonnie said, shaking her head. “That doesn’t seem to be nice.”
“Can he be trusted?” Duster asked.
“Completely,” Richard said, smiling. “In all the years he knew what the jukebox could do, he didn’t tell anyone until he gave the gifts of changing the past to a few friends. And he and his wife are two of the nicest people you can ever have the pleasure of meeting. They hadn’t said a word to anyone about what the jukebox could do.”
Duster glanced at Bonnie who just smiled.
Bonnie looked at Ryan and Talia. “You two did the math and helped build the thing. Do you care about how we handle this?”
“I would hate to see him continue searching when he actually found us after three years,” Talia said.
Ryan agreed with that completely.
Duster turned to Richard. “So meet them in the main room and get them to sign the standard nondisclosure agreement and bring them down for some lunch. I need to take a shower and change clothes.”
With that, Duster turned toward the men’s locker room.
“This is going to be fun,” Richard said, laughing and pushing his sandwich forward slightly on the counter and heading toward the elevator. “Don’t eat my food. I’ll be back.”
“Actually,” Bonnie said, “this just might turn out to be a wonderful Christmas Eve.”
Ryan just laughed and went back to working on his soup and sandwich. He remembered clearly, even though it had been thousands of living years before, how shocked he felt when he first saw this place.
Now he was going to get to see it on two other people’s faces. And actually get the chance to thank the man who treated his and Talia’s experiment with such class and respect.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
December 24th, 2023
Boise, Idaho
STOUT WAS STUNNED at the huge mansion that sat in front of him and Jenny as they were buzzed through the gate and into the Historical Research Institute grounds.
There was a cold breeze blowing and both of them were wrapped up tight in their winter coats. The massive old oak trees that surrounded the old Victorian-style home were bare of leaves and the grass still showed the dusting of snow they had gotten a few days before.
There was hope of a white Christmas, but Stout doubted it would happen. But he just wanted to have a report to the gang at the Garden tonight about the jukebox original owners’ search. Since the jukebox had quit working, that was about the only mention the thing got now every Christmas Eve.
“This place is something,” Jenny said, staring up at the tall spires and old windows.
“I haven’t been in this part of town since I was a kid,” Stout said. “I didn’t remember these old houses were out this way.”
They moved carefully up the stone steps onto the covered wooden porch that was massive and stretched along the front of the house and went around one side.
“You sure the jukebox was delivered here?” Jenny asked.
Stout laughed. “I was sure of the address, and the name, but now seeing this place, I can’t imagine it. We might as well just head back.”
“We got this far,” Jenny said, shaking her head at him. “We can ask a few really silly-sounding questions.”
Stout laughed and kissed her lightly on the cheek. “It’s Christmas Eve, what can it hurt?”
“Exactly,” she said.
They turned to the big wooden door with a small typed sign that said, “Push hard and come in. The old door sticks.”
So Stout did push hard and the door swung open and he moved aside to let Jenny go in first. Then he followed her and pushed the door closed.
As the door clicked shut, blocking the cold wind and the slight traffic noise from the road in front of the building, Jenny gasped, like she had seen a ghost.
Stout swung around to face Richard from the Garden, smiling at them from near a massive antique desk that sat between the entrance room and a second room beyond.
A wood fire in a large stone fireplace in one corner crackled lightly, the only sound in the room.
Stout started to say something, but not one word came out. Not one.
Richard just kept smiling.
He looked completely wrong not standing behind the bar at the Garden.
Finally Jenny said, “What are you doing here?”
“That’s a very long story,” Richard said. “And before I can tell you, I need you both to sign a very simple document in which you promise you will never tell anyone what you see here.”
Again Stout tried to say something, but his mind just wouldn’t connect with his mouth as Richard turned, picked up two pieces of paper and handed them to both of them.
Stout forced himself to look at the simple nondisclosure agreement. Very basic, very simple. It wanted nothing. It was just an agreement to not disclose anything they saw or heard in the Institute.
“If we sign these you can tell us what the hell is going on?” Jenny asked.
“I can,” Richard said, smiling.
>
“And if we don’t sign them?” Stout asked.
“Then I can tell you that no one in the Institute knows about any jukebox being delivered here.”
“Are you a member of this place?” Jenny asked, indicating the old rooms around them, decorated to look like time had frozen in 1880.
Richard pointed to the documents and handed Jenny a pen.
Jenny moved over to the edge of the desk and signed the paper and handed it to Richard.
Richard went around behind the desk, made a copy, then handed the copy to Jenny and put the original in an empty file basket.
Stout was still so shocked to see Richard, he didn’t even know what to say. He had known Richard since he started the Garden, had sold him the bar after all, had trusted him with everything. And yet clearly he knew nothing about the man.
Stout moved to the desk, took the pen, and signed the simple non-disclosure agreement and handed the paper to Richard.
Richard made the copy, handed the copy back to Stout, and then smiled.
“To answer your first question,” Richard said, “yes, the jukebox was delivered here in 1980.”
“Is your real name Richard Cone?”
Richard laughed. “It is, and always has been. Come on, I have some friends I want you to meet.”
“Who is that?” Stout asked, trying to keep the anger he was feeling at Richard out of his voice.
“The inventors of the jukebox,” Richard said, touching a button hidden on a panel. “They are wonderful people. I think you’re going to like them.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
December 24th, 2023
Boise, Idaho
IT WAS ALMOST ten in the evening on Christmas Eve when Stout held Jenny’s hand as he opened the Garden Lounge door for her. Light snow was falling, giving everyone the hoped-for white Christmas.
To Stout, coming into the warm, comfortable interior of the Garden always felt like coming home.
And now, tonight, it felt even more so. The red candles on the tables were flickering and the faint background smell of old smoke mixed with a faint odor of rum gave the air a slight thickness.
Fred, Carl, Billy, Dave, and Sandy were all sitting at the bar. And two stools remained open for him and Jenny.
Richard stood behind the bar, smiling at them.
That afternoon, he and Jenny had sat in a massive underground cavern, talking with Richard, Bonnie, Duster, Ryan, and Talia, the four inventors of the jukebox, and a world-famous historian named Dawn Edwards.
After a few hours, Dawn had to leave to go be with her husband for Christmas Eve and Richard had left to go open the Garden.
The four inventors had asked if he and Jenny were hungry for dinner and the six of them had gone out for a wonderful dinner downtown in a private room.
Stout wasn’t sure about all the stories they had told, and about Richard being from a hundred years in the future, but after owning the jukebox for so many years, he was more than willing to keep an open mind about everything. Owning a time-traveling jukebox could do that to a person.
And besides, the four of them were wonderful and smart and really loved to laugh. And they all seemed very appreciative of how he had protected the jukebox and told very few people about it.
Over dinner, Stout had told them about how he had decided to give his friends the gift of change one Christmas Eve, and how the new group of friends had been very careful with the machine.
He and Jenny both told them about their last trip through the jukebox before it stopped working. And it had helped them decide to be married in this time period.
Then the inventors told Stout how they had retired the original jukebox and that the jukebox now in the Garden was just a replica.
And he and Jenny learned that their only trip together through the jukebox had been the very last trip anyone would ever take through it.
Stout felt very relieved when he heard that.
And Jenny had just said, “Good.”
Now, he and Jenny were back where Stout felt he belonged, with his friends at the Garden Lounge. But he and Jenny both felt they had made new friends today. Three years of searching on and off for the creators of the jukebox had turned out better than he could have ever hoped.
So as Stout and Jenny took their spots at the bar, Carl asked, “So where have you two been?”
“Running down the last research on the jukebox,” Stout said.
“And having a wonderful Christmas Eve dinner,” Jenny said.
“And did you have success on the search?” Sandy asked. She had helped him a lot in his quest to find the owners of the jukebox.
Bonnie and Duster had given him permission to tell the others who knew about the jukebox the truth about it. But not anything about the Institute or the location of the jukebox.
But Stout and Jenny had decided to just invite the four of them for a Christmas Eve drink at the Garden and let them tell what they wanted to tell.
And all four inventors had agreed.
“Before I answer that,” Stout said as Richard put glasses of eggnog in front of both him and Jenny, “let’s have a toast, as we always do every year to the jukebox.”
Stout raised his glass and everyone followed suit.
“To the jukebox,” Richard said, raising a glass. “The reason we are all here.”
Everyone agreed and drank.
A moment later, the front door opened, letting in the sound of the traffic outside and the blowing wind.
“You forget to lock up, Richard?” Dave asked.
Richard smiled and shook his head.
“Make room at the bar everyone,” Stout said as he and Jenny stood and scooted their stools in closer together. “We have very special guests joining us this Christmas Eve.”
“Who?” Carl asked as everyone turned around to see who was coming in.
“The inventors of the jukebox,” Stout said, moving toward the front door to greet his new friends.
This was going to be the best Christmas Eve ever at the Garden Lounge.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Considered one of the most prolific writers working in modern fiction, USA Today bestselling writer Dean Wesley Smith published far more than a hundred novels in forty years, and hundreds of short stories across many genres.
At the moment he produces novels in four major series, including the time travel Thunder Mountain novels set in the Old West, the galaxy-spanning Seeders Universe series, the urban fantasy Ghost of a Chance series, and a superhero series starring Poker Boy.
His monthly magazine, Smith’s Monthly, which consists of only his own fiction, premiered in October 2013 and offers readers more than 70,000 words per issue, including a new and original novel every month.
During his career, Dean also wrote a couple dozen Star Trek novels, the only two original Men in Black novels, Spider-Man and X-Men novels, plus novels set in gaming and television worlds. Writing with his wife Kristine Kathryn Rusch under the name Kathryn Wesley, he wrote the novel for the NBC miniseries The Tenth Kingdom and other books for Hallmark Hall of Fame movies.
He wrote novels under dozens of pen names in the worlds of comic books and movies, including novelizations of almost a dozen films, from The Final Fantasy to Steel to Rundown.
Dean also worked as a fiction editor off and on, starting at Pulphouse Publishing, then at VB Tech Journal, then Pocket Books, and now at WMG Publishing, where he and Kristine Kathryn Rusch serve as series editors for the acclaimed Fiction River anthology series.
For more information about Dean’s books and ongoing projects, please go to www.deanwesleysmith.com, www.smithsmonthly.com or www.fic
tionriver.com.
Thank You!!
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Table of Contents
Introduction
Just Shoot Me Now!
ONE
TWO
THREE
Black Betsy
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
An Easy Shot
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Romance Novel Challenge
ONE
TWO
THREE
My Socks Rolled Down
Melody Ridge
DEDICATION
AUTHOR’S NOTE
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
Smith's Monthly #21 Page 21